An experiential learning model applied to nurses working with patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (C/D) is a rare neurological disease, transmissible, incurable and always fatal affecting humans, as well as animals. In the 1980s, the "mad cow disease" (MCD) epidemic in the United Kingdom popularized prion diseases worldwide. However, this contributed to the proliferation of disinformation, causing confusion between C/D and MCD in the public, as well as in some health care providers.

Validation of a tool to assess health practitioners' decision support and communication skills.

As patients become more involved in decisions affecting their health, it is important to monitor and improve the support clinicians provide to facilitate shared decision making. The Decision Support Analysis Tool (DSAT) was developed as a research tool to evaluate practitioners' use of decision support and related communication skills during a clinical encounter. The DSAT, consisting of six categories of decision support skills and four categories of communication skills, was tested with 34 actual transcripts of patient-physician dialogue.